


Our Usual Words

by mousapelli



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Memory Loss, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:34:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25777456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mousapelli/pseuds/mousapelli
Summary: Sora and Riku have tried everything to restore Sora's lost memories. Now the only places left to try are those with memories that Riku would rather forget.
Relationships: Riku/Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 123
Collections: Re⊕Collect: A Soriku Fic Collection





	Our Usual Words

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Re:Collect zine, all works inspired by Re:Mind. I had a great experience with everyone involved. Everyone running it, writing, and doing art were all amazing, and I'm so happy I was invited. 
> 
> Check out the rest of the collection for lots more amazing fic!

“All set to go,” Sora announced. He put a knee up on his bed, crawling over to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with Riku at the window. “How’s it look?”

Outside Sora’s childhood bedroom, the heavy storm clouds made it look like night instead of late afternoon. Rain was coming down in sheets; the play island was a murky shape in the gloom.

“Good as it’s getting, I think,” Riku said. He bumped his shoulder into Sora’s. “You really want to go out in this? Waves look rough.”

“Isn’t that the point?” Sora leaned out further, hanging over the windowsill until Riku grabbed him by the collar and hauled him back. Sora looked up at Riku, rain caught in his hair and eyelashes. “It’s gotta be like the night of the storm for me to remember anything.”

“You’re right,” Riku agreed, swallowing a sigh. “We’ve already tried everything else.”

Sora flashed Riku a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, Captain Sora never loses a passenger overboard.”

“Since when are you captain?” Riku asked, letting Sora drag him to his feet.

“That’s how I remember it,” Sora declared. The memory joke was so unexpected that Riku laughed.

“You’re in for a surprise when we get your real memories back,” Riku said, ruffling Sora’s hair. “Sure you don’t want to keep the fantasy version?”

“Shut up!” Sora shoved Riku back, grinning. “Come on, race you to the boat.”

Sora insisted on rowing, glad to burn off some energy. He looked silly with his hair soaked flat by the rain, cheeks puffed with the effort of rowing against the rough waves, but Riku doubted he looked any better; he certainly wasn’t any less wet. Both of them heaved sighs of relief when they reached the play island without capsizing.

Scrambling out first, Sora grabbed Riku’s hand to haul him onto the dock and didn’t let go even when they were both steady. Sora laced their fingers together and squeezed, their palms slick with rain. Riku squeezed back, grip tight.

They walked down the beach, their sneakers squishing in the wet sand. They’d already re-explored the secret place with Kairi weeks ago. Sora had examined the drawings and the door but hadn’t remembered anything. Turning their backs to the shack, Riku and Sora headed down the boardwalk to the outlook with the bent paopu tree.

Sora paused when they stepped off the boards, looking around. “Tell me where I was. Here?”

Riku closed his eyes to steady himself; the Islands falling was one of his worst memories, and the details of it were hazy from adrenaline and the disorientation of Ansem’s eventual possession. He and Sora had never talked about that night, but if it meant calling back any of Sora’s shattered memory, it was worth trying.

And if that didn’t work... Riku shook that thought off. They’d try something else. No matter how many tries it took, Riku wouldn’t give up.

“Here,” he answered, pulling Sora several more steps. He muttered, “ _Bind_ ,” sticking Sora’s sneakers to the ground as Riku kept walking forward.

“Riku?” Sora frowned as Riku’s hand slipped out of his grip. Riku turned around, just out of Sora’s reach.

“The door has been opened,” Riku said. He held out his hand as if he meant for Sora to take it, but Sora’s reach was just short, hand whiffing through the air.

“What?” Sora scrunched his face up. Riku watched for any sign of recognition on Sora’s face, but it was hard to see anything with the dark and the rain.

“That’s what I told you, even though I didn’t understand what it meant.” Riku had to raise his voice over the wind. “I told you we were leaving here, and never coming back.”

Sora strained against the Bind spell, his whole body leaning forward. His expression was turning panicky, but Riku forced himself to go on. He’d promised that he could handle it, for Sora’s sake. Riku summoned a dark corridor at his back; it wasn’t exactly like the darkness that had sucked at their feet that night, but the way Sora’s face went tight said it was close enough.

“I told you that I wasn’t afraid of the darkness,” Riku said. He set his face in the smug, challenging smirk that he’d worn so often back then. “Are you afraid, Sora?”

With a cry of frustration, Sora ripped free of the spell and threw himself at Riku, slamming into him so hard that Riku’s footing slipped in the wet sand. They tumbled backwards into the dark corridor, Riku curling his arms protectively around Sora’s back. He squeezed his eyes shut against the mild nausea of using a corridor, and grunted when he took the brunt of their landing with his butt.

Sora’s arms were locked around Riku’s neck, face buried against Riku’s shoulder. They were both soaking wet and shivering, and Sora’s breathing was too fast.

“I’ve got you,” Riku promised, rubbing slow circles against Sora’s back. Eventually, Sora calmed enough to take a deep breath. “Are you all right?”

“M’fine,” Sora muttered, pulling away to scrub at his face. Riku pushed Sora’s dripping hair back, examining how Sora’s face was drawn tight, pale enough that his freckles stood out. “Where are we?”

“See for yourself,” Riku suggested. Sora twisted around, looking at the streetlamps coloring the cobblestones golden. Riku didn’t know exactly where Sora had ended up the first time, but he’d dropped them into a corner in District 3, a spot familiar to both of them.

“Traverse Town?” Sora asked. He climbed off Riku to get a better look.

“The dream version,” Riku explained, standing up and wincing. The cobblestones hadn’t done his butt any favors, that was for sure. “We haven’t been back to the real Traverse Town since we closed the door. It might not exist anymore.”

Sora trotted this way and that, examining things, while Riku stripped off his hoodie and wrung water out into the Lady and Tramp fountain. Sora circled back to Riku’s side, handing his hoodie over to be squeezed out too.

“Anything?” Riku asked. Sora shrugged.

“It feels familiar, but nothing specific.” Sora took his hoodie back, grimacing at its dampness as he put it back on. “Were you here, too?”

“No. We met here later, but after the storm I ended up somewhere else,” Riku explained. Sora nodded, then stuck out his hand.

“Show me,” he ordered, his expression determined.

“Yeah,” Riku agreed. He took Sora’s hand and called another dark corridor. Sora squeezed Riku’s hand as they stepped through.

Hollow Bastion’s castle hadn’t changed much despite two years of renovation efforts. Twisting copper pipes stuck out of its towers at wild angles, water still flowed up the crystal fissure walls, and the acrid taste of metal and magic settled on the back of Riku’s tongue. Even knowing that the castle hadn’t belonged to Maleficent, Riku wished the Restoration Committee had razed the whole thing to the ground.

“I know this place,” Sora said, looking down at the floating island they were standing on, then up towards the castle gate.

“Do you?” Riku asked, cautiously optimistic. He’d brought them out low enough in the fissure that the rebuilt town wasn’t visible. There hadn’t even been a town the first time he and Sora had been here, just the castle.

“I could barely glide yet, so I kept missing the ledges,” Sora said, shivering. “I was scared of falling all the way down. Donald kept yelling, and we didn’t have a map, and...” Sora’s voice trailed off, face going blank as his memory dissolved. He blinked, then looked up as if Riku had asked him a question. “What?”

Riku nodded, used to these transitions. “Let’s head up.”

Navigating the suspended islands was much easier now that both of them could Airstep, but Sora held tight to Riku’s hand anyway, as if his fear of falling remained. A dozen jumps above them, the platform with the stone archway appeared, the Beast’s claw marks still gouged into it.

“How about here?” Riku asked.

Sora looked at the arch, then up at the sky. He shook his head. “Nothing.”

“It’s...” The words wouldn’t come out, and Riku drew a deep breath. He hated this memory, and wished telling it to Sora meant he could forget it. “This is where I took your keyblade from you.”

“You did what?” Sora snorted, like that was ridiculous. “Didn’t I just call it back? What would you want mine for?” The amusement slid off Sora’s face when he realized Riku wasn’t laughing. “Riku?”

“I wanted to hurt you, that’s why.” Riku dropped his gaze, unable to look Sora in the eye, and squeezed Sora’s hand. “I didn’t know I had my own keyblade. We both thought that there was only one, so I took it to prove that I was stronger. I wanted you to be scared, and alone, so you’d need me again.” Riku snuck a glance up; Sora’s eyes were glassy with tears, one already rolling down his cheek. “I’m glad you can’t remember it.”

“I’m not,” Sora insisted angrily. He was gripping Riku’s hand so tightly that his chewed-down nails dug into Riku’s skin. “I hate that you know everything about us, and I don’t. I don’t even know why I’m crying right now!” Sora kicked a rock so hard that it ricocheted off two neighboring islands before dropping into the chasm. More quietly, he continued, “I know I already forgave you for this, probably an hour later, but everything’s all jumbled up, so it hurts like it’s happening right now. If I still had that toy sword, I’d knock you silly with it, keyblade or no keyblade.”

Riku’s breath caught. “I didn’t tell you about the toy sword.”

“That’s...” Sora’s face twisted in concentration, then he grunted. “Whatever. What happened next?”

“You took your keyblade back and knocked me silly with it,” Riku chuckled. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

The pink teleport crystal was thankfully still lit up, taking them up to the castle’s entryway. Riku let Sora lead the way; he was better with places than people or stories, as if muscle memory was carrying him through. Sure enough, Sora led them unerringly through the entry hall, the library, and several lift stops. Sora only paused when they reached the chapel, expression turning anxious.

“I think this is the place from my fire nightmare,” he whispered. Sora’s dreams had always reflected his experiences while awake; his memory being damaged had turned his nightmares into abstract, terrifying affairs. Riku knew which dream Sora was talking about, because he’d pulled Sora out of it a dozen times: walls of green flames stretching overhead, searing heat, twisted faces appearing in black smoke.

“You fought Maleficent as a dragon here,” Riku said, seeing the stone gargoyles and green stained glass with new realization. Sora pressed closer to Riku, shivering. “Sora? Do you—”

“I’m fine!” Sora interrupted, too sharply. He marched ahead, fast enough that Riku had to jog to catch up. “Let’s get out of here.”

Riku found the grand hall more unsettling; wreckage from their fights still littered the floor, scorched from fire and thunder spells. Sora seemed unbothered here, examining the niches that the Princesses had been held in, putting his palm against cracks in the marble columns.

But once they’d climbed the stairs leading up to the dais, the color drained back out of Sora’s face. His expression wavered between confused and anxious, making him look younger.

“I don’t remember much from when Ansem was controlling me,” Riku said quietly, looking around. The heart-shaped portal had been dismantled, but if Riku closed his eyes he could still feel how its unsettling, mechanical whirring made his molars buzz. “I remember fighting him felt like slamming into a shut door, and how scared I was that he’d hurt you and Kairi. You?”

Sora shook his head. He clutched at his t-shirt, tugging it down far enough for Riku to see the edge of the starburst scar over Sora’s heart. Sora was shivering, eyes unfocused, chewing on his lower lip hard enough to split it. Sora’s fingers were cold when Riku put his hand over Sora’s.

“Are you cold?” Riku asked. He gathered Sora into a hug, frowning at the dampness of Sora’s hoodie. He kicked himself for not stopping and drying them both off the whole way. “You’re shaking.”

“I feel weird,” Sora muttered against Riku’s shoulder. “Not cold, not anything, but in my chest I can feel where it should be _something_. Something big, and awful. Like how in a fight you get hit and you know it’s really bad because it doesn’t hurt right away.” Riku opened his mouth, ready to call the whole thing off, but Sora kept talking. “Do you think it hurt? Unlocking my own heart?”

“Yes,” Riku answered honestly. Just thinking about Sora turning Ansem’s keyblade against himself made him feel queasy. “When Ansem locked out my heart, it was pressure first, squeezing all the air out of me, and then it was so cold that it burned, but I never went numb, it just went on hurting more and more. Maybe it’s not like that if you do it willingly, though.”

“Sounds like something only an idiot would do,” Sora tried to joke, voice wavering. He pulled back enough to give Riku a self-deprecating smile. “Just how many incredibly dumb things could I do in a row, huh?”

“Only half as many as I did,” Riku assured. He roughed up Sora’s hair with one hand, trying to lighten the mood. “Although if you hadn’t overslept by a whole year, I’m sure we’d be tied.”

Sora stuck out his tongue, slapping Riku’s hand off his head. His amusement faded as quickly as it had come. “Is that where we’re going next?”

“Can’t exactly take you to Castle Oblivion,” Riku reasoned. “And even if I could, all your memories of there were already erased before you left.” Riku looked Sora over critically. “We should stop for now. We don’t have to do this all at once.”

“No, I want to keep going.” Sora held Riku’s gaze steadily until Riku blinked.

“All right,” Riku gave in. Sora grinned smugly, and Riku tried to look stern. “But we’re drying off first. _Aero._ ”

“Riku!” Sora spluttered at the blast of air to his face. He zapped Riku with an Aerora of his own in revenge. By the time they were dry, they both looked like they had lost a fight with a hairdryer Heartless.

The old mansion looked the same as ever, peaceful and lonely in Twilight Town’s golden glow. Out on the lawn, everything smelled of grass and wild herbs. Sora bent down at the base of a broken column and snapped a few sprigs from an overgrown parsley plant.

“Do you even know why you’re doing that?” Riku asked, amused. Sora looked at the leaves in his hand, openly perplexed, and Riku couldn’t help but laugh at him. Sticking his tongue out, Sora tucked the parsley in one of his pockets. “Wanna look for Lucky Emblems while you’re at it?”

“Your face is a Lucky Emblem,” Sora retorted, punching Riku’s arm.

Roxas and Naminé had brought Sora to the mansion weeks ago to show him Naminé’s drawings still taped up, so Sora already knew his way around. He paused at the top of the staircase, looking towards Naminé’s door.

“What you said before, about my Castle Oblivion memories,” Sora said. “Naminé thinks it’s because of her unchaining and rechaining my memory back then that we can’t fix it now.”

“You heard that?” Riku asked, surprised. Naminé had compared it to bending a piece of metal too many times, weakening it until it snapped. Sora had still been in the lab then, barely able to stay awake for an hour at a time after Riku had brought him home, drained to his limit physically and magically. Riku was surprised Sora remembered anything from those first few days.

“You said it wasn’t her fault. Did you mean it?” Sora turned to examine Riku’s face. “Or were you just trying to make her feel better?”

“Both,” Riku murmured, rubbing his face tiredly. He could still picture Naminé sitting with him at Sora’s bedside, hands twisted in her skirt. “It’s true that your memory wasn’t the same after that, but if she hadn’t done it, you never would have woken up. She shouldn’t regret what she did for you, the things we made her do.”

Their footsteps rang hollowly on the metal stairs down into the lab. Sora passed by the bank of computer monitors without comment, perpetually uninterested in them. When they reached the hallway lined with pods, Sora’s face tightened. He reached up to touch fingertips to each pod as he passed, brushing their smooth, translucent surfaces. Riku followed him into the room at the end, where Sora’s pod still yawned open. Sora touched the sharp point of one extended petal, mouth pressed into a tight line.

“They almost put you back in one, to heal,” Riku blurted; it suddenly felt like a secret he didn’t want to keep anymore. “I begged them not to.” Begged, then argued, then yelled, and didn’t stop yelling until they’d given up the idea. He hadn’t been in much better shape than Sora at that point, panicked and overemotional. “Ienzo said I was being irrational, but he wasn’t here the first time, he has no idea how hard it was for me to see you in...Sora?”

“For you,” Sora echoed, voice hollow. His eyes flickered yellow. “How hard it was for _you_.”

Darkness flooded out from Sora’s chest, covering him head to foot, and Sora dropped to a crouch, glaring at Riku with unblinking, luminous eyes. Riku froze, adrenaline icy in his veins; he’d seen Sora’s rage formchange before, but never outside of battle. Sora hissed and charged past Riku, knocking him aside from the doorway with a swipe of his claws.

Riku chased him, cursing Sora’s speed when he found the hallway already empty. Riku heard Sora clanging up the steps and raced to catch up, thinking frantically about what he’d do if Sora made it outside and into the woods. But when Riku reached the library door, he found Sora still in the upstairs hallway, sniffing at one of the doors before Teleporting through it.

The door stuck when Riku twisted the knob, warped from humidity. He shouldered it open, the wood screeching in protest.

Inside, the room was mostly bare, but enough detritus remained to show how long Riku had stayed here: discarded pieces of equipment in the corner, leftover synthesis shards, books stacked on the desk. Sora was standing in the middle of the room, chest heaving, tendrils of darkness rising off him like smoke.

“Sora!” Riku called, breathless from running. Sora shuddered, then the darkness slid off him like water, vanishing at his feet. Riku crossed the room, grabbing Sora’s shoulders to spin him around. Relief washed over Riku when he saw Sora’s eyes, lit with fury, but blue again.

“You lived here!” Sora accused. He jerked back, out of reach. “How long? Months? The whole year?”

Riku let his hands drop, guilt welling up in his chest. “Yes.”

“I looked for you for weeks!” Sora raged on, voice cracking. “I could’ve gone home with Kairi! I could’ve told Naminé to let me forget all the awful stuff I went through and been a normal, happy kid again! But I climbed in that _thing_ and let Naminé take my whole heart apart just so I’d know your dumb face when I saw it again! So that I wouldn’t forget why we were best friends! And you _left me here_.”

Sora started crying in earnest. Riku reached for him again and this time Sora didn’t fight him, falling limp against Riku’s chest. Riku wanted to argue, to explain, but he didn’t dare interrupt now that Sora was actually remembering something.

“You promised to protect me,” Sora wailed. “You _promised._ Even if you didn’t want to see me, you should have stayed long enough to tell me yourself!”

“That’s not why,” Riku insisted, horrified that Sora had ever thought that. “I did want to see you, more than anything.”

“Then you should have done it, jerk!” Sora fisted his hands in Riku’s shirt like he was going to shake the daylights out of him.

“Yeah, I should have.” Riku squeezed Sora harder, throat tight. “I’m sorry for breaking my promise.”

“Forget it,” Sora said dully. He sniffled, tears winding down. “As soon as we leave here, I’ll forget the whole thing.”

“Then I’ll tell you it again,” Riku said fiercely. “As many times as it takes!” Sora chuckled. “What?”

“You still haven’t learned about making impossible promises, huh?” Sora shook his head, then gave Riku a watery smile. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

As soon as they stepped back outside, Riku could see the moment Sora’s memory collapsed back into pieces, his expression going blank. Glancing around as if they’d just arrived, Sora noticed the parsley growing at his feet, and bent to retrieve a handful.

He sighed when he found his pocket already full of leaves. “Happened again, huh?”

“Yes.” Riku struggled to think through his disappointment. Sora’s heart had remembered deep enough hurt to change forms, and held that form for minutes on end; that had to mean they were getting closer. Then something else struck him. “You remembered our promise.”

Sora tilted his head. “Promise?”

“I promised to protect you.” Riku tapped Sora’s crown pendant. “We were so young, I didn’t think you remembered it, but you were carrying it with you, all this time. If that’s still in there, then everything else must be too.”

“We already knew that,” Sora said, exasperated. He clutched at his necklace. “Having all my memories rattling around loose inside me isn’t helping anything! You can see all the glitter in a snowglobe too, if you keep shaking it over and over.”

“You aren’t a snowglobe.” Riku peeled Sora’s fingers away from his necklace; he’d been gripping it so hard it was imprinted on his palm. Riku rubbed his thumb gently over the red marks. “I’m frustrated, too. These were the last places I could think of to try. We’ve been everywhere else.”

Sora frowned. “No we haven’t. There’s the Keyblade Graveyard.”

“There isn’t anything there,” Riku replied quickly. If there was one world he never wanted Sora to set foot on ever again, it was that one. “Just desert, and rusting keyblades from a thousand years ago.”

“You said we were gonna try all the places with bad memories,” Sora argued, face set stubbornly. “We’re not skipping the place where a ton of serious crap happened.”

“ _No._ ” Riku crossed his arms.

“I’m going,” Sora said tiredly. He held out his hand. “Are you coming or not?”

It wasn’t really a question, and Riku didn’t bother answering as he took Sora’s hand and called another corridor.

There really was nothing there except sand, and the wind blowing it into their eyes. Riku squinted as he walked out from the shelter of the cliffs, Sora trailing behind. The Graveyard was a yawning, empty place and it made Riku’s chest ache with all his ugliest feelings: insecurity, anger, loss. What Sora must feel here, Riku couldn’t imagine; all he wanted was to get Sora away from here as quickly as possible.

“See? There’s nothing here.” Riku heard a thump behind him. “Sora?” By the time he turned, Sora was on his knees, clutching his chest. Riku dashed back, dropping to his knees in the dirt and grabbing Sora’s shoulders.

Sora lifted his head, tears spilling down his cheeks. “Riku, what did you _do_?”

“We fought the Demon Tower,” Riku said. “Then the labyrinth—”

“Not then,” Sora said through gritted teeth. “The first time!” He clutched at his head. “Nngh!”

“First time?” Riku repeated, alarmed. He cupped Sora’s cheek. When his fingertips touched Sora’s skin, their Dream Eater link roared to life, drowning out all of Riku’s other senses.

When his vision cleared, he was still in the Graveyard, on his hands and knees, but the hands pressed into the dirt weren’t his, the wristguards gray and red. A roaring filled his ears, and drops of water were hitting the ground between his hands. Teardrops? Why couldn’t he move?

A voice, his own voice, said, “I believe in you. You won’t give up.”

It took so much effort to lift his head, and when he did, Riku saw himself walking away; beyond that, the Demon Tower filled the sky. He saw himself lock his stance and drive Braveheart into the Tower, shearing it to either side. He looked like a comet, a meteor, the air around his keyblade a crackling, violet corona. The Tower pressed closer as he burned himself out, closer, until it swallowed him whole.

Riku felt the instant his light was extinguished, felt the snap of the Dream Eater link like an agonizing supernova in his chest. The Demon Tower bore down on Riku like a flood bursting a dam, Riku powerless to do anything but scream his anguish, then everything went black.

Riku’s eyes snapped open, gasping for air. The desert air burned against his raw throat. It took a long minute for his gaze to focus on Sora in front of him, white as a sheet and still clutching his head.

“Was that a memory?” Riku rasped. Sora nodded jerkily. “But that didn’t happen! How can you have a memory of something that never happened?”

“I think it did,” Sora said, voice choked. “Riku, I think you died.”

Riku shuddered, unable to take that in. It was impossible, it had to be, but he’d seen it with his own eyes and felt everything that Sora had. Utterly bewildered and chest still aching with phantom pain, Riku reached for Sora, pulling him close. Sora wrapped arms around Riku’s neck, shaking all over.

“Don’t go,” Sora begged between ragged breaths. “Don’t leave me!”

“I’m right here,” Riku promised. He repeated it over and over, lips pressed against Sora’s hair. Eventually, Sora went limp; after a moment of panic, Riku realized he’d fallen asleep, small wonder after all of this.

* * *

Hours later, in their shared room in the Mysterious Tower, Sora woke up slowly. He rolled over, waking Riku out of a restless doze. Sora squinted at Riku. “Riku?”

“Hey there,” Riku said, leaning up on one elbow to look Sora over. “You feel OK?”

“Head hurts,” Sora answered, then his breath caught, eyes snapping open. “How long—”

“Just a few hours,” Riku assured quickly. “It’s still today.” Sora nodded, worry melting into relief. Riku helped him sit up, Sora’s limbs uncoordinated. Bracing himself for the answer, Riku asked, “Do you remember what happened?”

To his surprise, Sora nodded. “Yeah. I don’t understand it, but I remember.”

“Master Yen Sid thinks we might have bent reality somehow,” Riku said, as if that explained anything. He nudged Sora’s shoulder with his own. “You slept through him explaining time travel again.” He smiled when Sora groaned. “You’ll like this better. I called Naminé. She has a theory about your memory.”

“She does?” Sora stretched his arms over his head, interested.

“Say you really did, somehow, get a do-over,” Riku started, taking one of Sora’s hands. He traced a line from the center of Sora’s palm out along one finger, then returned to Sora’s palm and traced a second line down the next finger. “Now we’re all here. The only person who could keep a memory of the first try would be you. Rewriting our timeline overwrote that memory, but your heart still knew it.”

“Like my Castle Oblivion memories.” Sora curled his fingers into a fist. “Even if I can’t remember them, they still hurt.”

Riku nodded. “Naminé thinks that because you and I have so many of the same memories, my heart was using the Dream Eater link to hold your fragmented memories in the right places, trying to get you to re-chain them. But your heart couldn’t do it, because this huge, important piece was missing, and my heart couldn’t give you back that memory because I didn’t have it.”

Sora drew a slow breath in. “Can she fix me now?”

“We’ll go to Twilight Town tomorrow and find out,” Riku promised. A bright grin spread over Sora’s face, and Riku couldn’t help but smile back. “When I told her everything that happened, she said you might already be healing on your own.”

“Aw, don’t put me in charge of something that important.” Sora chuckled. “Hey. All the places you took me today. Why’d you pick them?”

“They were the places I broke my promise,” Riku explained, voice low. Sora tilted his head. “Even when I was trying to protect you, I still hurt you. But I didn’t want you to forget them, because they’re memories that only you and I know, and nobody else. Even if they hurt.”

“You kept your promise, though,” Sora said, turning his hand over to grip Riku’s. “You were with me at the very end. You believed in me. Even if we fought in the middle, that doesn’t matter. We fought all the time when we were kids, but you were always my best friend.”

Riku’s heart skipped a beat. Watching Sora’s face closely, he asked, “You remember that?”

“Sure,” Sora said easily. His eyes widened as he realized too. “Yeah! Only bits and pieces, but it’s a start!” Sora launched himself at Riku in a crushing hug; Riku could feel Sora’s heart racing. “Thanks, Riku. I promise I won’t forget again, any of it.”

Riku squeezed Sora back, until it felt like they only had one heartbeat between their chests. “No more promises, OK? Both of us are terrible at them.”

“OK,” Sora agreed. “It’s a deal.”


End file.
